Khan’s comments follow figures released by The Ministry of Justice
on Thursday, which revealed a marked increase in violence inside
English and Welsh prisons.

Grievous assaults have soared by 30 percent, and three separate
murders have occurred in the past twelve months alone. The data
also reveals a stark 69 percent rise in suicides - the most
dramatic since 2005.

Prison governors throughout the state have persistently warned
that British jails are struggling to deal with increasingly
crowded conditions, with a record prison population of over
85,000. Budgets cuts of almost 25 percent implemented over the
past three years have also compounded matters, the governors’
say.

According to recent figures, almost a quarter of the UK’s 126
prisons have been issued poor performance ratings. The most
recent state-monitored performance tables illustrate that the
conditions inside 28 prisons are now considered to be a matter of
concern. One jail, Brinsford youth prison in Staffordshire, has
been categorized as a “serious concern”.

Reflecting on the Ministry of Justice statistics, justice
secretary Chris Grayling said the rise in fatalities in custody
was being taken seriously by the government, as was the surge in
assaults.

“As with any significant period of change – coupled with
prison population increases higher than expected – it has been a
challenge. We are responding to and managing the additional
pressures but prisons are still running safe and decent
regimes," he said.

Grayling said there is no simple explanation for these increased
levels of violence and fatalities in jails. With the trend
apparent in both public and private prisons, it was not linked to
the government’s "benchmarking" exercise that reduced
staff in some jails, he insisted.

A looming 'crisis'

Despite the Ministry of Justice’s figures, Grayling defended the
government’s current policies, suggesting the coalition had
introduced major reform across the state’s prison and probation
sectors tailored to improved public service at a reduced cost to
British tax payers.

But the shadow justice secretary, Sadiq Khan, dismissed
Grayling’s claims, emphasizing the Ministry of Justice’s official
statistics were a damning reflection on the government’s
policies.

“The true scale of the growing crisis in the country's
prisons is revealed by the government's own data. Violence is up,
deaths in custody are up and the number of prisoners going on the
run is up. The government is trying to hide the sheer scale of
the failings in the ministry of justice from the public by trying
to pretend there's not a problem, let alone a crisis," he
said.

Professor Roger Matthews, based at the University of Kent, has
carried out in-depth work on British prisons and penal policies.
Matthews believes the recently published Ministry of Justice
statistics are indicative of deep structural problems within
Britain's prison system.

“These figures tell a story. The dynamics of imprisonment in
Britain aren't working”, he told RT on Thursday.

The root causes for what Khan termed a looming prison crisis are
multi-pronged, according to Matthews. The primary contributors to
the crisis are “overcrowding, poor administration”, and
a heightened “sense of grievance and anguish”, he said.

Overcrowding detracts from the quality of life of inmates,
“changes staff’s relationship with prisoners”, and often
“services becomes restricted”, he added. Resultant
“poor inmate-staff relations” and underlying
“antagonism” can result in heightened tension, he
concluded.

Together, these factors coalesce to create an overall dynamic
termed the “amplification spiral”. Outwardly expressed,
this manifests as violence in the form of “disturbances,
riots and aggression”. Inwardly directed, it’s expressed as
violence towards the self, which can culminate in
“suicides” and “self-harming”, Matthews claims.

'The role of the prison in 21st century
Britain?'

Currently the government are trying to “manage an overcrowded
system”, but they are not addressing core structural issues
that breed violence and demand stringent reform, professor
Matthews cautions.

Matthews believes privatization of the prison system plays an
important role in the current upsurge in violence infiltrating
Britain's jails. “At present, approximately 15 % of the UK’s
prison system is privatized”, he emphasizes.
Because they are inherently “profit-centered”, the
companies who own these facilities are not inclined towards
“running therapeutic, rehabilitative institutions”, the
professor says.

We’re seeing a gravitation towards “warehousing with high
levels of overcrowding”. As a result, the government are
“moving inmates from one facility to another on a daily
basis”, he warns.

"This is a government strategy to dissipate tension between
fellow prisoners, as well as inmates and staff. But this safety
valve strategy has limited utility, and fails to address the root
causes of such tension", Matthews emphasizes.

In this respect, the Government’s short-termism will only have
“limited utility for so long”, according to Matthews.

A progressively violent atmosphere in Britain’s prisons is
accompanied by a notable decrease in the number of inmates
completing specially designed rehabilitation programmes.

Between March 2013 and 2014, the number of sex offender treatment
programmes plummeted from 2,757 to 2,576, despite a sharp
increase in the number of sex offenders imprisoned during that
period.

Similarly, the Ministry of Justice’s figures reveal the number of
inmates who completed drug rehabilitation programmes had also
fallen.

Three fundamental questions must be addressed in order to tackle
the current prison crisis, according to Matthews. Who are we
sending to prison? For how long should these people be
incarcerated? And what purpose does their imprisonment serve?

The only real route to effective reform of the prison system is
to reimagine what the “role of the prison in 21st
century Britain should be”, Matthews suggests. “The
government are currently tinkering around the edges of a
fundamentally flawed system”, he said

"A comprehensive root and branch revision of the entire
prison system is required. The government must engage in a
radical rethink of the policies they currently employ”,
Matthews added.

But such a profound policy shift is unlikely under the current
coalition, he concluded.